Press Release published in PRLog regarding the release of the upgraded site and launching new features.

The new upgraded site with sophisticated chat application received huge applause from the service users as well as professional counselors. The new site which launched on Thursday, 9th May claimed to have more facilities than its competitors.

ProvenTherapy.com has been there on the cyber world for many years, providing ‘healing touch to troubled hearts and souls’ according to its previous business slogan. Now it has 80 approved ProvenTherapists practising 24X7 and the number is growing.

Last week the virtual clinic launched its new website along with highly sophisticated chat application for use by service users as well as Therapists. The new chat application reported to have many new features:

* Flash based live chat application with high speed and real time simulation
* Live text chat and live voice chat with excellent audio clarity
* Application run from dedicated server to ensure maximum bandwidth support
* Interactive whiteboard to make therapeutic communication effective and powerful
* Online access to verbatim (full counseling script) for Therapists and Clients any time
* Clients are offered two fee models – fee per session, and fee per minute
* Peer support facility for Therapists
* Notes keeping facility for Therapists
* Clients forum for sharing issues anonymously for Therapists to respond

The premier online counseling and psychotherapy service has changed its business tag line to ‘online counseling for life’s journey’ with the aim of adding positive color to its healing mission.

Missouri based Counseling Psychologist joins the ProvenTherapists team. Sandra Vogt is specialized in the treatment of victims of domestic violence and has six years professional experience in the field. Sandra is also specialized in the treatment of depression anxiety, and other mental health disorders. Sandra opened her virtual clinic at ProvenTherapy and is available for online chat, telephone, or email counseling session for potential clients.

Communicating with your younger ones about your mental health

The Dilemma of CommunicationMental health patients, in general, do not confide with their children that they were in a psychiatric unit during the past few days or weeks. Instead, they prefer to give some other excuses for being away from the family home. This may be due to their own worries around children becoming over anxious about parents, or their own inability to accept that they are mentally ill, or their own anxieties around the social stigma attached to mental illness among the communities or may be their own fear of being excluded from the crowd.

Understandably the mental health patients do not want to ‘shock’ their children with the news that they have a diagnosed psychiatric disorder for which they are on treatment.

If you are suffering from mental health difficulties you need to reflect on this very seriously. Is it good to tell your kids about your mental health difficulties? Or would you prefer to keep it with yourself? Or is it still a dilemma?

Playing Hide and Seek

It is easy to play hide and seek. But it is not easy to keep a secret from others eternally. If you don’t tell your children that you are having difficulties around your mental health, someone else will tell them the fact, and very often the reported version would be an exaggerated one than the fact. When someone else tells them that you are mentally ill and they did see you in the psychiatric unit or they saw you visiting the day clinic, it is possible that your children will start thinking why you didn’t tell them. This will only increase their anxiety around how serious the issue is.

Playing hide and seek will always leave room for further doubts. When your children do not have direct information, they will start guessing, which might lead to increased levels of anxiety. Telling the truth might raise some doubts in their minds, but may not be as bad as getting a shocking story from a third party. Moreover, when they see you telling your story, they are getting first hand information and they clearly see you talking to them in real terms, which is more reassuring that you are aware of your difficulties and you are taking steps to deal with it.

The Fair Play

Children, when they are in trouble, look towards parents for support. They seek energy from parents. However, when they get the message that their parent is suffering from mental health disorder they would prefer not to approach you for support or energy, for they understand that their parent is struggling without energy. In other words, they know that the energy reservoir is empty, so there is no point approaching you!

However, when parents disclose their own mental health difficulties with the children they are giving them the positive message that mental health disorder is just like any other medical condition that could be treated with medical and therapeutic support. So, you are making them confident that you are an adult and you know how to manage your difficulties with available support. In this way you are giving the positive message that you are seeking support when you have some difficulties, and in the same way your children could very well approach you for support when they have difficulties. So, it is always good to be straight forward!

Addendum: Some young children develop self blaming for the mental health difficulties of their parent. They might believe that their behavior caused this mental health difficulty to their parent. This self condemnation could be psychologically damaging to them. So, it is important for the children to know that their parents’ mental health disorder is due to their own troubled thinking and it is not caused by anyone else. They also need to be reassured that medication and supportive counseling will fix this and parents are seeking help in this regard.

Do you think that you need somebody to extend a healing touch to your troubled heart? Visiting a mental health professional doesn’t make you feel comfortable? Feeling embarrassed to meet a counselor face to face? Read along… you probably will benefit from taking online counseling or psychotherapy from an online clinician.

Virtual clinic is intended for people like you. There are hundreds of virtual mental health clinics like ProvenTherapy.com and thousands of qualified therapist working round the clock to talk to you… No need for embarrassment because you are not going out from your room to physically meet a therapist face to face… No need to let others know that you have an appointment with a mental health professional what so ever… There are thousands of practitioners available online in the virtual world to choose from… You can pick your therapist after reviewing their credentials and also you have the option to inquire about the therapy methods they are using even before committing to attend an appointment.

Online counseling clinics operate through different methods. Most of the counseling sites provide you online live chat session, which is found to be the most effective one in many respects. The therapist can ask different diagnostic questions in real time in order to make his clinical assessment of your problem. Once a diagnosis is made the clinician will discuss the treatment plan with you. Follow-up appointment will be part of further care plan. Many other Internet clinics offer telephone counseling service as well. ProvenTherapy.com has a telephone call widget within the site itself. Client can click this call button to talk to the therapist who receives the call on his/her telephone. All telephone sessions as well as live chat sessions will be recorded and will be kept confidential. Clients are encouraged to check if the online clinic is protected by additional SSL encryption layer in order to prevent data leakage.

The major disadvantage of online therapy is that the clinician loses the opportunity to read the client’s body language, and hence not able to note if the client has problems like tics. The clinican cannot make physical examination or check your blood pressure which are needed on some cases. However, research shows that there are millions of people access this online counseling facility because of the comfort and flexibility the virtual clinic gives to them. Of course, virtual clinics offer convenience, value for money, and more flexibility in terms of appointments, and choice of therapists.